by Parker Swift
Our foreheads were touching, and I’d already stopped breathing in anticipation when he gently touched his lips to my own. He held this simple kiss for a beat longer than I ever would have expected given the determined expression in his eyes. I felt his tongue slide across my lips, urging them to open. He gently tugged on my lower lip with his teeth before slipping his tongue into my mouth and kissing me in earnest. In the next moment, he leaned into me, feverishly stroking my tongue with his own, pressing my back firmly into the tree behind me. He was in total control. In no way were we kissing. He was kissing me, and it was the fiercest, deepest kiss I’d ever experienced. Every gesture seemed to resonate in my whole body, bringing fresh life to my skin, alerting all of my senses, and making me instantly wet. I had no idea kissing could be like this.
There was no way I was going to let him have all the fun. I twisted my hands free and brought them into his hair, pulling him even closer. He let me kiss him back, which I did just as ferociously as he had kissed me. Both of his hands at my waist, on my skin, and pulling, almost lifting me into him. This kiss had its own beat, its own rhythm, and I was totally lost to it.
Finally, he began to trail gentle kisses away from my mouth towards my ear, ending our mutual assault. Our cheeks barely together, his mouth hovering by my ear, he whispered, “Fuck.” He said it with curiosity, almost wonder.
I looked at him, stunned, still feeling like I was on some kind of Tilt-A-Whirl, trying to regain my balance. How had we gone from him rejecting me to him taking me over completely?
“Are you ok?” he said, looking imploringly into my eyes, and holding my face in his hands. He asked it like he’d never had to ask it before, like maybe he was just as surprised at his behavior as I had been. I nodded, touching my swollen lips and still trying to get a grip on what had happened.
“I can’t keep my hands off of you. But, Lydia—” He looked around us, as though making sure no one had seen or heard us. “I shouldn’t. I can’t—”
Suddenly he looked more resolved. He backed away from me and turned to head back towards the pub. He turned around after a few feet, looked at me with piercing, resolute eyes, and quietly said, “I’m sorry.”
And then he was gone. Again.
* * *
The next morning we had the car packed by 7:30, and I was just double-checking I hadn’t left anything in my room when Charles found me.
“Lydia,” he said, startling me out of my reverie. “Sam just swung by to say goodbye and gave me this for you.” He handed me a small white envelope. As I took it from him, I could feel its heftiness—it was thick expensive-looking cream-colored stationary.
“Thank you, Charles. I’ll be down in a moment.” Charles left me alone, and I sat once again on the beautiful tufted linen couch and fought off a yawn. I hadn’t slept a wink the previous night, going over every minute of my interactions with Dylan, trying to figure him out. Trying to figure me out.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a single ivory notecard with the initials DWLH engraved in navy ink at the top. A foreign phone number was written in large print, and in bold, masculine handwriting below:
RING ME WHEN YOU ARRIVE. —DYLAN
Chapter 6
The flight attendant woke me from my half sleep to let me know we were landing at Heathrow. I’m not sure I’d had a full or decent night’s sleep in the two weeks since the crazy kiss-on-the-path business, but I’d been doing my best to chalk the whole thing up to a weird end-of-summer fling, the kind of story I’d tell my daughters one day when they were old enough.
My last day in New York was split between trying to hone my pathetic wardrobe into something that could be packed into luggage but also wouldn’t leave me feeling embarrassed to be working for a fashion designer, saying goodbye to my friends, and spending as much time with Daphne as possible.
I’d been waiting for this day, the day I’d arrive in London, for what felt like my whole life. I retrieved the photo from my bag to look at it for the zillionth time—the only photo I had of my parents together, the only photo of my mother at all. There wasn’t even a photo of their wedding day, which, according to my dad, had been a spur-of-the-moment Tuesday afternoon at the local register’s office. In this picture they were leisurely picnicking atop Primrose Hill, young teachers living abroad, clearly in love, sitting on a tartan blanket. My mother was heavily pregnant, and her head rested on my dad’s lap while he played with her hair. They looked like pure, relaxed bliss, like they’d just been laughing at some inside joke.
London was the city where they’d been happy together, where I’d been born, and I’d been dreaming about breathing its air since I was a child. Even though had no memories of being there, I had always imagined that park, Primrose Hill, would feel like home, that if I were there, where they’d been, sitting in the same green grass, I’d feel the family I’d never really had. More than anything, that was why I was going to London. As the pilot came over the speakers announcing our final descent, I safely tucked the photo into my oversized caramel-colored leather tote bag and let the contentment of finally being there settle under my skin.
Getting off the plane took ages, and my whole body ached from sleeping in an awkwardly coiled hump in my tiny cramped seat. After collecting my luggage, clearing customs, and finding myself a latte “for takeaway,” I made my way towards an exit promising a taxi stand. If I hadn’t turned my face to wipe the latte foam off my lips, I would have missed the formally clad chauffeur holding a sign that clearly read LYDIA BELL. I stopped in my tracks and met man’s gaze. “Excuse me,” I said. “Um, I’m Lydia Bell. Are you sure there isn’t some mistake? I’m arriving from JFK.”
“No mistake, Miss Bell. My instructions are to drive you where you wish to go.”
Wow—they certainly treated second assistants better in London than they did back in New York. This was fabulous. The chauffeur introduced himself as Lloyd, took over my baggage cart, and led me to a large silver Mercedes sedan at the curb. It looked longer than the typical car, and after he opened the door and helped me in, I could see why. The black leather seating was spacious, with more than ample legroom, and there was a partition between the cab and the seating in the rear, which looked to have a window that could rise and fall.
“Would you like me to close the partition, Miss Bell?” Lloyd asked from the driver’s seat.
“No, thank you, Lloyd,” I replied. It would have felt so formal and odd to be separated from the driver. Even in New York, I was one of those people who ended up chatting with the cab drivers.
Once we were off, I gave Lloyd the address of my new home. By some winning-the-lottery variety of luck I’d managed to arrange to housesit for a couple in Notting Hill. They were both academics and friends of my favorite journalism professor at NYU, and they happened to be on sabbatical in Turkey. It was mine and mine alone for a year, which seemed like plenty of time to figure out where I would want to—and could afford to—live for the long haul. I obviously hadn’t seen it yet, but in pictures it looked to be the tiniest, cutest English house straight out of my anglophilic fantasies. All I had to do in exchange for staying there was water their plants and send them a package once a month with their mail. I was assured it was walking distance to the tube and to the famous Portobello Road Market. I couldn’t wait to be part of a neighborhood, especially one as picturesque as Notting Hill.
As the car smoothly flew down the highway, or the “motorway” as Lloyd had called it, I was glued to the window, trying to soak up my new city. In most ways, the houses we passed weren’t that different from those back in New York and Connecticut, but there were subtle differences, leaving no doubt that I was in a foreign country. Something about the tone of the brick, the lack of wood clapboard houses, the clothes on the laundry lines all told me I was somewhere new. I’d get glimpses of drivers on the right sides of their cars and was startled into remembering my own foreignness. All of this was strange and exciting to me, not them.
As we entered Lond
on proper, the homes got bigger, more regal and elegant, and I began to see the familiar London of postcards and movies. Lloyd darted around other vehicles expertly and navigated the complicated roundabouts with ease.
“Excuse me, Lloyd?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Could you tell me if we pass Primrose Hill?”
“I’m afraid we won’t be passing that spot on this trip, Miss Bell. Would you like me to take you there instead?”
“No, no. Thank you, though.”
“Anytime, miss. Holland Park is down that way to your right, and if we continued up this way you’d see Hyde Park and Kensington Palace. You’ll find a map in the console there, if you like.” A long shiny wooden-paneled console lined my side of the partition, and I found the map in a drawer, along with bottles of sparkling water, wine, refreshments, and a package of breath mints. It was an entire hotel minibar. Man, this was the way to travel.
Outside my window, stylish Londoners were going about their business, and I couldn’t wait to be one of them. An old man in a tweed blazer and cap sat on a park bench with a newspaper. A young woman in killer heels and a perfectly tied trench coat walked by him with purpose, a long umbrella firmly tucked under her arm. I peeked into a taxi stopped at a traffic light and saw a father straightening his son’s tiny tie before the car sped away. I saw a gaggle of high school students in their uniform blazers whispering and circling each other as they stood outside a newsstand. A tired-looking chef ducked out the back door of his restaurant for a cigarette. So many of these little pieces of a city I’d seen before—New York was just as lively—but somehow they had a different quality here. A look in one direction, and I could be in Virginia Woolf’s London, and in another direction I’d see British punk rounding the corner. Surely it was just the rose-colored glasses of a new arrival, but I was hooked on this place, and it wasn’t even ten a.m. on my first day.
* * *
After a shower—well, after figuring how to work the shower and then soaking in it for twenty minutes—I began to unpack some of my belongings and take stock of the surroundings. I dressed in the first thing I could find—my favorite jeans, oxfords, and a loose cotton sweater—ran a brush through my hair, grabbed my tote minus all of the magazines I’d been lugging around, and headed out to explore. I felt far livelier than I deserved given my lack of sleep, but it was like fresh blood was pumping through my veins. A British transfusion. I couldn’t have stayed inside if I’d tried.
The first thing I’d need was a cell phone. The house phone had been disconnected, and I needed to let Daphne know I’d arrived safely. My old phone was beyond the point of software upgrades and apparently didn’t have any international capacity, so I’d tossed it in a trashcan at the airport. Doing that had been surprisingly liberating. I was truly leaving my old self behind.
In the back of my mind I was still debating adhering to Dylan’s invitation, his order, to call him. For the past two weeks, I’d been fraying at the edges from our kiss on the path. When I thought about it—and I had, in explicit detail, repeatedly—I felt part of myself coming alive. I could feel my cheeks flush and belly clench every time I remembered his lips and hands on me. And beyond that, I felt almost new, like I was meeting a different part of myself. In essence, I was simply insanely, outrageously attracted to him.
But I couldn’t pin him or his bizarre behavior down—kissing me and then apologizing before disappearing. Hell, I couldn’t pin myself down when I was around him, and I was afraid of throwing myself in his path unless I had a better handle on where we’d be headed. No matter how well I avoided it when talking with my friends or pushed my thoughts of my father into the recesses of my mind, I knew my grief was still right there, lurking, waiting to make me feel lost. And something about Dylan made me feel like I might lose my tenuous grip on myself, like somehow he had the power to bring me out of the fog I’d been in, and the truth was, well, I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
I walked up to Bayswater Road, the main thoroughfare, and started to head towards Marble Arch and Oxford Circus. According to Google maps, which I’d consulted before leaving New York, I’d eventually land in a sea of shops and restaurants. Plus, this allowed me to take in Hyde Park, Speakers’ Corner, and all the people enjoying the last of the summer sun. As I entered the fray and began to duck down the winding side streets, I couldn’t help but peek into all of the beautifully curated boutiques, catering to singular and refined tastes. I knew I’d have months to explore them all, but I couldn’t get enough. I passed tiny mahogany-lined shops catering to gentlemen, offering bespoke suits and ties, and others selling artisanal high-end toiletries since 1790. But there were also fish ’n’ chip stands, large chains, and stores selling soccer gear. It was a total mélange of high-end and low-end, a commercial concoction for every need. I absorbed every smell and took pleasure out of every cobblestone, letting my nose and eyes guide me down narrow passageways and across major roads.
One store tucked in a narrow walkway between a noodle shop and a tiny French cafe caught my eye. Fancy hats and fascinators were perched in the window, something I’d never see in New York. I still hadn’t found the cell phone store, but I couldn’t resist. I was the only one in the spare and elegant shop, and I luxuriated in the serenity of the space, hidden from the bustle outside. A lit candle made the store smell of jasmine, and I inhaled the relaxing scent and took my time fingering each dress and accessory. I could imagine the months of becoming a Londoner falling into place, like I was absorbing the fabrics of this new place. My hand paused on a small cobalt-blue tailored dress, and I pulled it from the rack to get a better look.
“I still haven’t seen that on anyone.” The salesgirl’s voice seemed to come from nowhere—she’d been so quiet. “I’m sure it would look fabulous on you.” I knew what she meant in that my small-breasted figure worked with low necklines, and this dress had a deep v in the front. It was sleeveless, and looked to hang to mid-thigh. When I pulled it from the rack I saw its killer feature—a cutout diamond at the lower back, sexy but not risqué. I had to at least try it on.
The look on the salesgirl’s face when I came out of the dressing room told me that I was pulling it off, and I figured I could always throw on a jean jacket and wear it to work if an actual dress-appropriate occasion never popped up. The price tag—nearly three hundred pounds—was a chunk of my savings I shouldn’t have been parting with, but I vowed to myself to be more frugal going forward. I wasn’t paying rent, and I’d get my first paycheck before too long. Maybe it was careless, but it felt like a small celebration at having arrived in this place I loved, of all the newness.
After finally purchasing a cell phone and finding the grocery store and picking up some essentials, I was ready to drop. Whatever adrenaline had seen me this far was now failing me. I hailed the nearest cab, and nearly passed out on the short ride to my new home. In order to avoid falling asleep at six p.m., I called Daphne.
“There you are! How was your flight?” Daphne’s enthusiastic voice was exactly the jolt of caffeine I needed.
“Oh, you know, lap of luxury. I’m pretty sure the guy I slept next to had clinical-level BO problems, and my ass is still numb, so you know, typical day for me.”
Daphne laughed. “Well at least your sense of humor made it over intact. So what’s it like? What have you been doing?”
“Oh, it’s effing adorable. I saw this old man today dressed completely in tweed, a pipe hanging out between this teeth, and he was swinging his umbrella with every step, like a cane, in this way that was just, well, perfectly British.”
“And you brought him back to your apartment and shagged him rotten?” Daphne interrupted, saying the last bit with her best English accent, which was unfortunately indistinguishable from her Austin Powers impression.
“Obviously,” I said, nearly choking on my laughter. “Anyway, yeah, I spent the afternoon wandering around and getting acclimated. My feet are sore—I walked forever.” I rubbed my toes as I held the pho
ne between my ear and shoulder. “Ooh, and I got the most amazing dress!” I proceeded to tell Daphne every detail about the house, the neighborhood, and my shopping trip. I loved that I could tell how happy she was for me.
Daphne finally stopped my rambling and interrupted me. “So. Are you going to call him or what, Lydia? Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing here, talking about shopping and old tweedy men, avoiding the whole thing completely.” She saw right through me. It was almost like I was hoping I’d fall asleep while on the phone with her so I wouldn’t have to make the decision.
“Call who?”
“Oh yeah, right.”
“Daphne, I’m sure he’s not as hot as I remember. I mean that old guy on the street probably was Dylan. The fact that I hadn’t seen an actual man in three months when I met him was probably clouding my vision. The magical Canadian summer air was probably hiding his weird English teeth and wonky eye.” I looked in the mirror and realized I was actually making a wonky eye face as I was saying this.
“Lydia!”
“What?!”
“Stop deflecting. You’re not going to joke your way out of this one.” Daphne was using her no-nonsense, there’s-a-lecture-just-over-the-horizon tone with me. “Call him. You were obviously into his whole high-handed I’m-an-Earl-and-the-world-turns-the-way-I-tell-it-to thing, which—”
“I was not,” I tried to interrupt. “Plus apparently he’s a Marquess, whatever that is.”
“Whatever! You were. You are. I get it. It’s kinda hot. I know it freaks you out to let go, but you need to branch out. We have already talked about this. Get off the phone with me, and call him! I love you. We’ll talk tomorrow. Ok, bye!” She sped through the last few sentences and hung up.
Argh! Sometimes she drove me crazy! But I also knew she was right. She knew how preoccupied I’d been by him, and she knew I hadn’t been able to get that kiss out of my mind. It’s just that, well, on top of me feeling so upended by him, he had a freaking title.
